Category: Books

By Gary Zukav

p. 21 “Our deepest understanding tells us that a truly evolved being is one that values others more than it values itself, and that values love more than it values the physical world and what is in it.”

p. 22 “The need for physical dominance produces a type of competition that affects every aspect of our lives.”

p. 23 “All of our institutions—social, economic and political—reflect our understanding of power as external.” (The author sees external power as bad)

p. 24 “We have come to perceive power as in the possession of a few while the majority serve it as victims.”

p. 24 Anything we fear to lose is a symbol of external power. “What we fear is an increase in our vulnerability.”

p. 25 “Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence.”

p. 26 When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we experience authentic power.

p. 27 “We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power.”

p. 29 **“Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution. The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the Earth are the means by which you evolve.”

p. 31 “When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment. This is the goal of the evolutionary process in which we are involved and the reason for our being.”

p. 37 “The conflicts of a human’s life are directly proportional to the distance at which an energy of personality exists separately from the soul.”

p. 38 “For many of us, being held responsible is equal to getting caught.”

p. 40 **“You receive from the world what you give to the world.”

p. 44 “The road to your soul is through your heart.”

p. 45 “Non-judgmental justice is a perception that allows you to see everything in life, but does not engage your negative emotions.”

p. 49 “We justify our exploitation of Life upon what we perceive to be the design of Nature.”

p. 56 “There is currently no place for spirituality within science, politics, business or academia.”

p. 57 “It is not natural for us to live without reverence, because that separates us from the basic energy of the soul.”

p. 60 “As we have come to seek and wield external power consciously, we have come to view feelings as unnecessary appendages.”

p. 61 **“Emotions reflect intentions. Therefore, awareness of emotions leads to awareness of intentions.”

p. 61 “The path to reverence is through your heart, and only awareness of your feelings can open your heart.”

p. 71 **“Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it.”

p. 83 “Intellect is meant to expand perceptions.”

p. 86 “Intuition serves inspiration.”

p. 102 “Every decision that you make either moves you toward your personality, or toward your soul.”

p. 102 **“The ultimate first act of free will: How do you wish to learn.”

p. 106 “Every experience, and every change in your experience, reflects an intention. An intention is more than a desire.”

p. 120 “The human emotional spectrum can be broken down into two basic elements: love and fear.”

p. 123 “We believe that we are not responsible for the consequences of our actions. We act as though we are not affected when we take and take and take.”

p. 123 “The world in which we live has been created unconsciously by unconscious intentions.”

p. 123 “You create in each moment.”

p. 129 “What you intend is what you become.”

p. 131 “The challenge to each human is creation.”

p. 135 “The center of the evolutionary process is choice.”

p. 149 “Recognition of your own addictions requires that you look clearly at the places where you lose power in your life, where you are controlled by external circumstances.”

p. 155 **“What stands between you and a different life are matters of responsible choice.”

p. 159 “Everything in the Universe evolves. It is only a question of which way you will choose to learn as you evolve. This is always your choice, and there is always wisdom in each choice.”

p. 162 “The marriage archetype reflects the perception of power as external.”

p. 166 “The true human condition in its most perfect form has no secrets.”

p. 171 “Authentic empowerment is not gained by making choices that do not stretch you.”

p. 189 “It is the health of the soul that is the true purpose of the human experience.”

p. 215 What is failure? Simply the process of cause and effect in action.

p. 242 “There is nothing without value that exists upon the Earth.”

p. 248 **“Choose the most positive behavior in each moment.”

By Dale Carnegie —

p. XIX “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.” William James

p. XIX “Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.” John G. Hibben

p. 6 “By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes.”

p. 8 “Criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home.”

p. 17 “To know all is to forgive all.”

**p. 18 “The deepest urge in human nature is ‘the desire to be important.’” John Dewey

p. 21 “If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character.”

p. 27 “There is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my self-esteem.” Alfred Lunt

p. 29 “Flattery will do you more harm than good. Flattery is counterfeit, and it will eventually get you into trouble.”

p. 29 “Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

p. 29 “We usually spend about 95% of our time thinking about ourselves.”

**p. 30 “One of the most neglected virtues of our daily existence is appreciation.”

p. 31 “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.” R.W. Emerson

p. 33 “Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.”

p. 34 “The only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants.”

p. 37 “If there is any one secret of success it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” Henry Ford

p. 47 “First arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.” Harry Overstreet

p. 50 “Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature.” William Winter

Fundamental techniques in handling people

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. p. 17
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. p. 31
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want. p. 50

p. 54 “You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

p. 55 “It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

**p. 59 “To be genuinely interested in other people is a most important quality for any person to possess.”

p. 60 “If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to do things for other people—things that require time, energy, unselfishness and thoughtfulness.”

p. 61 “If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm.”

p. 64 “We are interested in others when they are interested in us.” Publilius Syrus

p. 67 “There’s far more information in a smile than a frown.”

p. 68 “People rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.” (author’s observation)

p. 71 “Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”

**p. 71 “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abe Lincoln

p. 82 “One of the simplest, most obvious and most important ways of gaining good will is by remembering names and making people feel important.”

p. 85 “Genuinely listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay anyone.”

p. 94 “The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.”

Six ways to make people like you

1. Become genuinely interested in other people. p. 65
2. Smile. p. 74
3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. p. 83
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. p. 93
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. p. 98
6. Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely. p. 111

p. 118 “If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will. Ben Franklin

p. 120 “Hatred is never ended by hatred, but by love,” (Buddha) and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s view point.

How to keep a disagreement from becoming an argument: p. 120-121

• Welcome the disagreement.
• Distrust your first instinctive impression.
• Control your temper.
• Listen first.
• Look for areas of agreement.
• Be honest.
• Genuinely promise to think over your opponent’s ideas and study them carefully.
• Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest.
• Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem.

p. 124 “If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody know it.”

**p. 124 “You cannot teach a man anything ; you can only help him to find it within himself.” Galileo

p. 125 “You will never get into trouble by admitting that you may be wrong.”

p. 126 “Few people are logical.”

p. 127 “The little word ‘my’ is the most important one in human affairs, and to properly reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom.” James Harvey Robinson

p. 139 “Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes, but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exaltation to admit one’s mistakes.”

**p. 142 “By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.”

p. 145 “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are a sincere friend.” Abe Lincoln

p. 156 “It doesn’t pay to argue.”

p. 157 “He who treads softly goes far.”

p. 176 “You deserve very little credit for being what you are.” (open for discussion)

p. 197 “The way to get things done is to stimulate competition.” Charles Schwab

p. 197 “All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.” Ancient Greek

Winning people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. p. 122
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say ‘You’re wrong.” p. 134
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. p. 142
4. Begin in a friendly way. p. 151
5. Get the other person saying ‘yes, yes’ immediately. p. 157
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. p. 163
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers. p. 169
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. p. 175
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. p. 184
10. Appeal to the nobler motives. p. 190
11. Dramatize your ideas. p. 195
12. Throw down a challenge. p. 199

p. 205 “It is always easier to listen to unpleasant things after we have heard some praise of our good points.”

**p. 226 “I have no right to do or say anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

p. 234 “If you want to improve a person in a certain respect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding characteristics.”

To change attitudes or behavior: p. 246

• Be sincere.
• Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do.
• Be empathetic.
• Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest.
• Match those benefits to the other person’s wants.
• When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit.

Be a leader

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. p. 210
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly. p. 214
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. p. 219
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. p. 222
5. Let the other person save face. p. 226
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be ‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.’ p. 232
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. p. 237
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. p. 242
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest. p. 247

By Jim Collins —

1. “Good is the enemy of great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.”

2. “We believe that almost any organization can substantially improve its stature and performance, perhaps even become great, if it conscientiously applies the framework of ideas we’ve uncovered… Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”

3. “They first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.” “Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.” “‘Who’ questions come before “what” questions – before vision, before strategy, before tactics, before organizational structure, before technology.” “Character, work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments, and values are ingrained.” “The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.”

4. “…unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

5. “When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.”

6. “Transformations never happen in one fell swoop; ‘good to great’ comes about by a cumulative process – step by step.”

7. “Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems…Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.”

8. “Breakthrough results come about by a series of good decisions, diligently executed and accumulated one on top of another.”

9. “You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.”

10. “Lead with questions, not answers.” “Leadership: getting people to confront the brutal facts and act on the implications. One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality.”

11. Be a catalyst! “Focus on the few things that will have the greatest impact.”

12. “The key lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored.”

13. “Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest. Take a complex world and simplify it into a single organizing idea, a basic concept that unifies and guides everything.” “The HH (Hedgehog) Concept is a turning point in the journey from good to great. Everything from here on out hinges upon having the right HHC.” “Anything that does not fit with our HHC, we will not do.” “To create great results requires a nearly fanatical dedication to the ideas of consistency within the HHC.” Suggested HHC for high schools: “Improve classroom teaching effectiveness to
engage students in substantive learning.”

14. “You never just focus on what you’ve accomplished for the year; you focus on what you’ve accomplished relative to exactly what you said you were going to accomplish– no matter how tough the measure.”

15. “Create a “stop doing list” and systematically unplug anything extraneous.” “The real question is, once you know the right thing, do you have the discipline to do the right thing and, equally important, to stop doing the wrong things?”

16. “There’s too much waste in teaching. Getting rid of it takes tenacity, not brilliance.”

17. “Technology can be an accelerator, but not a creator, of momentum.”

18. Need to “improve relative to an absolute standard of excellence”, not just be as good as or better than others who, truth be told, are mediocre.
19. Sometimes we need a “BHAG” (Big, hairy, audacious goal).

20. “It is no harder to build something great than to build something good. We must realize that much of what we’re doing is at least a waste of energy.” “Perpetuating mediocrity is an inherently depressing process.”

21. “He could not fire tenured professors, but he could hire the right people for every opening, gradually creating an environment where the wrong people felt increasingly uncomfortable.”

Glenn Detrick

By Martin Seligman —

p. iii “Curing the negatives does not produce the positives.”

p. iv “The skills of becoming happy turn out to be almost entirely different from the skills of not being sad, not being anxious, or not being angry.”

p. vii “Self-esteem seems only to be a symptom, a correlate, of how well a person is doing in the world.”

p. 3-10 There are 2 ways to look at life’s occurrences: optimistically or pessimistically. Both ways of thinking seriously affect many aspects of a person’s life (work, health etc.)

**p. 13 “Failure can occur when talent and desire are present in abundance, but optimism is missing.”

p. 14 “Dealing with depression, achievement, and physical health are 3 of the most obvious applications of learned optimism.”

p. 24 “All you have to do to change the person is to change the environment.” (a view once, but no longer, held by behavioral psychologists)

p. 33-39 Test of Personal Optimism

p. 44-51 How to score the test

p. 44 “Your habitual way of explaining bad events, your explanatory style, stems directly from your view of your place in the world.”

p. 44 “There are 3 crucial dimensions to your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.”

p. 44 “If you think about bad things in always’s and never’s and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style. If you think in sometimes’s and lately’s, if you use qualifiers and blame bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style.”

p. 45 “People who believe good events have permanent causes are more optimistic than people who believe they have temporary causes.”

p. 46 “People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area. People who make specific explanations may become helpless in that one part of their life yet march stalwartly on in the others.”

p. 48 “Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope.”

p. 50 “People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.”

p. 52 “The question is whether or not changing beliefs about failure from internal to external will undermine responsibility.” (a question the author posses. He believes that one should only do this if a person is depressed)

p. 53 If you are a pessimist then:

• You are likely to get depressed easily
• You are probably achieving less at work
• You are probably not as healthy as you could be
• Life is not as pleasurable as it should or could be

p. 59-63 Test of depression and scoring of test

p. 75 “Rumination combined with pessimistic explanatory style is the recipe for severe depression.”

p. 89-90 Cognitive therapy uses 5 tactics:

1. “You learn to recognize the automatic thoughts flitting through your consciousness at the times you feel worst.”
2. “You learn to dispute the automatic thoughts by marshaling contrary evidence.”
3. “You learn to make different explanations, call reattributions, and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts.”
4. “You learn how to distract yourself from depressing thoughts.”
5. “You learn to recognize and question the depression-sowing assumptions governing so much of what you do.”

p. 90 “Life consists of putting my fingers in the biggest leaks in the dam.”

p. 91 “Often we distort reality [for ourselves] more than drunks do.”

**p. 101 Aptitude, motivation and optimism are the 3 most needed characteristics in order to obtain success at a challenging job.

p. 109 “There is considerable evidence that depressed people, though sadder, are wiser.”

p. 109 “Poor social skills are a symptom of depression.”

p. 111 “There is clear evidence that non-depressed people distort reality in a self-serving direction and depressed people tend to see reality accurately.”

p. 113 “There are times and places where we need our pessimism.”

p. 125 “On a whole, prepubescent children are extremely optimistic.”

p. 127 “Explanatory style sets in early.”

p. 149 In younger children, “the average boy will have many more depressive symptoms and suffer more severe depression than the average girl.”

p. 154 “I have come to think that the notion of potential, without the notion of optimism, has very little meaning.”

p. 163 Data from studies on professional basketball and baseball players show:

• “Teams, and not just individuals, have a meaningful and measurable explanatory style.”
• “Explanatory style predicts how teams will do above and beyond how ‘good’ a team is.”
• Success on the playing field is predicted by optimism and failure on the playing field is predicted by pessimism.”
• Explanatory style works by means of how a team does under pressure-after a loss or in the late innings of close games.”

p.171 “The mind can indeed control illness.”

p.174 “People who isolate themselves when they are sick tend to get sicker.”

p.179 “The way we look at bad events—our theory of tragedy—remains fixed across our lives.”

p. 185-198 Seligman partnered up with Harold Zullow to investigate the optimism of past presidents and their opponents in all the elections from 1900-1984. Their results then led them to try and predict the 1988 election. Their final prediction was that Bush would beat Dukakis by 9.2%; when the votes were actually tallied, Bush won by 8.2%.

p. 192 “In the 22 presidential elections from 1900 through 1984, Americans chose the more optimistic-sounding candidate eighteen times. In all elections in which an underdog pulled off an upset, he was the more optimistic candidate. The margin of victory was very strongly related to the margin in pessrum (pessimism and rumination), with landslides won by candidates who were much more optimistic than their opponents.”

p. 198-202 Gabriele zu Oettingen-Oettingen und Oettingen-Spielberg conducted a study to see if East and West Berliners differed in their optimism after their city was divided between the differing political systems of the U.S. and Russia. She found that East Berliners display much more despair—as measured by both words and body language—than West Berliners. However, it was not totally conclusive that the 2 different governments were the specific cause of her results.

**p. 207 OVERVIEW THUS FAR: “Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better. As we have seen, the optimist bounces back from defeat, and, with his life somewhat poorer, he picks up and starts again. The pessimist gives up and falls into depression. Because of his resilience, the optimist achieves more at work, at school and on the playing field. The optimist has better physical health and may even live longer. Americans want optimists to lead them. Even when things go well for the pessimist, he is haunted by forebodings of catastrophe.”

p.208-209 Guidelines for Using Optimism:

A. Use Optimism if:

1. You are in an achievement situation (getting a promotion, selling a product,

writing a difficult report, winning a game).

2. You are concerned about how you will feel (fighting off depression,

keeping up morale, etc.)

3. If the situation is apt to be protracted and your physical health is an issue

4. If you want to lead or inspire people or if you want people to vote for you

B. Do not use optimism if:

1. You goal is to plan for a risky or uncertain future

2. Your goal is to counsel others whose future is dim

3. If you want to appear sympathetic to the troubles of others, don’t start with

optimism (but use it later)

p. 217 “There are two general ways for you to deal with your pessimistic beliefs once you are aware of them. The first is simply to distract yourself when they occur—try to think of something else. The 2^nd is to dispute them. Disputing is more effective in the long run, because successfully disputed beliefs are less likely to recur when the same situation presents itself again.”

p. 220 Four important ways to make your disputation convincing

1. Evidence (The most convincing way of disputing a negative belief is to show that it is factually incorrect. p. 221)
2. Alternatives (Almost nothing that happens to you has just one cause. p. 221)
3. Implications (Often there are many possible implications; don’t just focus on the negative
4. Usefulness (Sometimes the consequences of holding a belief matter more than the truth of the belief. p. 223).

**p. 255 “Everyone has his own point of discouragement, his own wall. What you do when you hit this wall can spell the difference between helplessness and mastery, between failure and success.”

p. 256 “Optimistic individuals produce more, particularly under pressure, than do pessimists.”

p. 256-257 “Every successful company, every successful life for that matter, requires both accurate appreciation of reality and the ability to dream beyond the present reality.”

p. 282 “This is the age of personal control.”

p. 282-283 “The deciding, choosing, hedonistically preoccupied individual became big business. When the individual has a lot of money to spend, individualism becomes a powerful, and profitable, worldview.”

p. 283 “Inflated expectations are rooted in the expansion of choice.”

p. 284 “The life committed to nothing larger than itself is a meager life indeed.”

**p. 291 “Optimism is a tool to help the individual achieve the goals he has set for himself. It is in the choice of the goals themselves that meaning—or emptiness—resides.”

The bottom line: Optimism can be learned – and to much positive effect.

By Victor Frankl —

P.11: “The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

P.12: “He takes a surprisingly hopeful view of man’s capacity to transcend his predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth.”

P.16: “I wrote the book within nine successive days.” “I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of a concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones… I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.”

P.17: “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”

“Experiences in a Concentration Camp”

P.21: “It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors.”

P.22: “This was an unrelenting struggle… for life itself.”

P.26/27: “Once lost, the will to live seldom returned… (We were) ragged human figures, grey in the greyness of dawn, trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what destination we did not know.”

P.57: “The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

P.64: “The size of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

P.86: “The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action… Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”

*P.86: “…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

P.87: “…in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone.”

P.87: “It is this spiritual freedom – which can not be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

P.94/95: “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future… The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed.”

*P. 97: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

P.98: “We had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us… Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way.”

P.101: “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.”

P.103: “And I quote from Nietzsche: ‘That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.’”

*P.104: “What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.”

Glenn Detrick

2/06

By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi —

P. ix “This book summarizes…decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience – joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life that I call flow.

…a joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

…this book presents general principles…to transform boring and meaningless lives into ones full of enjoyment.”

P. 1 “Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness.”… “We do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did… people often end up feeling that their lives have been wasted, that instead of being filled with happiness their years were spent in anxiety and boredom.”

P. 2 “The intent of this book is to use some of the tools of modern psychology to explore this very ancient question: When do people feel most happy?”

“What I ‘discovered’ was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

Quoting Victor Frankl, “…success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”

P.3 “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

P. 4 “Getting control of life is never easy and sometimes it can definitely be painful. But in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery – or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life – that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.”

“Flow is that state in which people are so involved in any activity that nothing else seems to matter.”

P. 5 “What would really satisfy people is not getting slim or rich, but feeling good about their lives.

“However well intentioned, books cannot give recipes for how to be happy…each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity.”

P. 6 “Without some intellectual effort, a commitment to reflect and think hard about your own experience, you will not gain much from this book.”

“The optimal state of inner experience…happens when psychic energy – or attention – is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action…Periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives.”

P. 7 “It is crucial that one learn to transform jobs into flow-producing activities and to think of ways of making relationships more enjoyable.” “The way to achieve these goals is relatively easy in theory, yet quite difficult in practice.”

“Obstacles…are implicit in the human condition…Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life…Chronic dissatisfaction is an obstacle that stands in the way of contentment.”

P. 8 “Only the direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.”

P. 9 “Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on controls we are able to exert over the great (or lesser) forces of the universe.”

“Each of us has a picture, however vague, of what we would like to accomplish before we die. How close we get to attaining this goal becomes the measure for the quality of our lives. If it remains beyond reach, we grow resentful or resigned; if it is at least in part achieved, we experience a sense of happiness and satisfaction.”

P. 10 “…there is no inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way. The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure form the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment.”

P. 11 “…the pervasive listlessness that affects so many lives. Genuine happy individuals are few and far between… (there is a) general malaise.”

P. 12 “The roots of discontent are internal, and each person must untangle them personally.”

“(There is) an increasingly nagging question: ‘Is this all there is?’… Behind it all there is the expectation that after one grows up, things will get better.”

P. 13 “…it becomes clearer that money, power, status, and possessions do not, by themselves, necessarily add one iota to the quality of life.”

P. 14 “Religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent…Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.”

P. 16 “…while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousand fold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience. There is no way out of this predicament except for an individual to take things in hand personally.

THE major question for all of us: “Given that we are who we are, with whatever hang-ups and repressions, what can we do to improve our future?”

“…a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances… This requires a discipline and perseverance that are relatively rare.”

“And before all else, achieving control over experience (often) requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not.”

P. 19 “The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment… Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces… We must…learn to take charge of what happens in the mind.”

P. 20 “The simple truth – that the control of consciousness determines the quality of life… The oracle’s advice in ancient Delphi: ‘Know thyself’”.

P. 23 “…those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do live a happier life.”

P. 24 “A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening ‘outside’, just by changing the contents of consciousness… This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well.” (e.g. Victor Frankl)

P. 25 “…the mind has enormous untapped potential that we desperately need to learn how to use.”

P. 26 “We might think of consciousness as intentionally ordered information.” P. 28 “…consciousness can be ordered in terms of different goals and intentions. Each of us has the freedom to control our subjective reality.”

P. 30 “…an individual can experience only so much. Therefore, the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and quality of life.”

P. 31 “The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.”

P. 33 “…psychic energy…We create ourselves by how we invest this energy…Attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”

P. 35 “We have seen that experience depends on the way we invest psychic energy – on the structure of attention. This, in turn, is related to goals and intentions. These processes are connected to each other by the self, or the dynamic mental representation we have of the entire system of our goals. These are the pieces that must be maneuvered if we wish to improve things.”

P. 42 “When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again.

P. 43 “Two main strategies…to improve the quality of life: 1) try making external conditions match our goals and 2) change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.”

P. 44 “…the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom line is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.”

“In general there is (only) mild correlation between wealth and well-being.”

P. 46 “Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness.” “…enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investment of attention.”

P. 48 “To gain personal control over the quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.”

P. 49 – 67 “The phenomenology of enjoyment” has 8 major components

1. A Challenging Activity That Requires Skills
2. Merging of Action and Awareness
3. Clear Goals
4. Clear Feedback
5. High Level of Concentration on the Task at Hand: Focus
6. The Paradox of Control – lacking the sense of worry about losing control
7. Loss of Self-Consciousness — little opportunity for the self to be threatened
8. Time is Transformed – time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does

P. 70 “The flow experience…is good only in that it has the potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strength and complexity of the self.”

“We must constantly reevaluate what we do, lest habits and past wisdom blind us to new possibilities.”

P. 72 “…experience can be shaped to improve the quality of life.”

P. 74 “…every flow activity…transformed the self by making it more complex. In this growth of the self lies the key to flow activities.”

P. 75 “It is not skills we actually have that determine how we feel, but the ones we think we have.

P. 80/1 “…both Thomas Jefferson and Chairman Mao Zedong believed that each generation needed to make its own revolution.” “Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience.” “Culture can enhance flow.”

P. 83 “We need to know how to control consciousness – a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate. Surrounded by an almost astounding panoply of recreational gadgets and leisure choices, most of us go on being bored and vaguely frustrated. This fact brings us to the second condition that affects whether an optimal experience will occur or not: an individual’s ability to restructure consciousness so as to make flow possible. Some people enjoy themselves wherever they are, while others stay bored even when confronted with the most dazzling prospects.”

P. 88 “The association between the ability to concentrate and flow is clear.”

“The family context promoting optimal experience has five characteristics: clarity, centering, choice, commitment and challenge.”

P. 94/5 “…the easiest step toward improving the quality of life consists in simply learning to control the body and its senses… Everything the body can do is potentially enjoyable…physical activity contributes to optimal experience.”

P. 98/9 “Walking is the most trivial physical activity imaginable, yet it can be profoundly enjoyable if a person sets goals and takes control of the process… enjoyment does not depend on what you do, but rather on how you do it” (and how you think about it).

P. 103 “We can look toward Eastern religions for guidance in how to achieve control over consciousness.”

P. 105/6 “The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong…made possible by a discipline of the body. Yoga is one of the oldest and most systematic methods of producing the flow experience.

P. 107 “Visual skills can provide constant access to enjoyable experiences…the pleasure we can derive from just watching nature.”

P. 117 “…wonder – which is the seed of knowledge – is the reflection of the purest form of pleasure. Reading is currently perhaps the most often mentioned flow activity around the world.”

P. 119 “…the normal state of the mind is chaos.”

P. 127 “…playing with ideas is extremely exhilarating.”

P. 129 “…it could be argued that the main function of conversation is not to get things accomplished, but to improve the quality of experience.”

P. 132/3 “Observing, recording, and preserving the memory of both the large and small events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness…Having a record of the past can make a great contribution to the quality of life.”

P. 142 “…the goal of studying… is to understand what is happening around one, to develop a personally meaningful sense of what one’s experience is all about. From that will come the profound joy of the thinker.”

P. 144 “…if one finds flow in work, and in relations with other people, one is well on the way toward improving the quality of life as a whole.”

P. 149 “…enjoyment depends on increasing complexity.”

P. 160 “…’dissatisfaction’ is a relative term.”

P. 162 “ironically jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback, rules and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”

“…the underlying emptiness of wasted time…The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere.”

P. 163 “Unless a person takes charge of them, both work and free time are likely to be disappointing… People who learn to enjoy their work, who do not waste their time, end up feeling that their lives as a whole have become much more worthwhile.”

P. 164/5 “…the quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work and our relations with other people.” “Only in the company of other people do we feel complete.”

P. 167/8 “Because we depend so much on the affection and approval of others, we are extremely vulnerable to how we are treated by them.” “Companionship is so indispensable to well-being.”

“Most people feel a nearly intolerable sense of emptiness when they are alone, especially with nothing specific to do.”

P. 171 “A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life.”

P. 179 “Cicero: accepting limitations is liberating.”

P. 180 “In addition to long-term goals, it is imperative to have a constant supply of short-term objectives.”

P. 186 “…people report the most positive moods overall when they are with friends.”

p. 203 “The knowledge that one’s sufferings are shared adds an important perspective to the egocentrism of youth.”

“The peak in the development of coping skills is reached when a young man or woman has achieved a strong enough sense of self, based on personally selected goals, that no external disappointment can entirely undermine who he or she is.”

P. 204 “Paradoxically, this sense of humility…is a hallmark of strong people.”

“People who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves.”

P. 207/8 “Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth.”

“Transformations require that a person be prepared to perceive unexpected opportunities…(but) we will never become aware of other possibilities unless…we pay attention to what is happening around us, and evaluate events on the basis of their direct impact on how we feel.”

P 209/10 “As soon as the goals and challenges define a system of action, they in turn suggest the skills necessary to operate within it.” Rules for developing the ‘autotelic self’ (one who easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges and therefore maintains an inner harmony):

1. Set goals
2. Become immersed in the activity – focus
3. Pay attention to what is happening (self consciousness is the most common source of distraction and it is the very lack of self-consciousness that makes deep involvement possible.)
4. Learn to enjoy the immediate experience

P. 213 “To create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to those who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.”

P. 215/6 “…any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life… What matters is that it focuses a person’s attention and involves it in an achievable, enjoyable activity.”

P. 217 “…a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life… It is not enough to find a purpose that unifies one’s goals; one must also carry through and meet its challenges. The purpose must result in strivings; intent has to be translated into action…. What counts is not so much whether a person actually achieves what she has set out to do; rather, it matters whether effort has been expended to reach the goal, instead of being diffused or wasted… Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it.

“…we admire people who seem to have come to terms with themselves.”

P. 220 “…a system of goals can help to organize life into a coherent flow activity.”

P. 223 “…we must invest energy in recognizing, understanding, and finding ways to adapt to the forces beyond the boundaries of our own individuality.”

“Purpose gives direction to one’s efforts, but does not necessarily make life easier.”

P. 224 “Billions of parents…have sacrificed themselves for their children and thereby made life more meaningful for themselves.”

P. 225 “…complexity and freedom…are a challenge we must find ways to master.”

P. 226 “… (most) goals that have sustained action over a period turn out not to have enough power to give meaning to the entirety of life…

“Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other… If a man has not bothered to find out what he wants, if his attention is so wrapped up in external goals that he fails to notice his own feelings, then he cannot plan action meaningfully.”

P. 227 “The consequence of forging life by purpose and resolution is a sense of inner harmony.”

P. 228/9 “When there are too many demands, options, challenges, we become anxious; when too few, we become bored… Boredom is something children have learned the hard way, in response to artificially restricted choices.”

P. 230/1 “The life theme…identifies what will make existence enjoyable… When a person’s psychic energy coalesces into a life theme, consciousness achieves harmony… Discovered life themes are products of a personal struggle to define the purpose of life.”

P. 238 “If a new faith is to capture our imagination, it must be one that will account rationally for the things we know, the things we feel, the things we hope for, and the ones we dread. It must be a system of beliefs that will marshal our psychic energy toward meaningful goals, a system that provides rules for a way of life that can provide flow.”

Glenn Detrick

04/07

By Susan Jeffers —

Excerpts from the book:

p.3 “Fear seems to be epidemic in our society.”

p.4 “Fear is primarily an educational problem.”

p.6 “Many of us short-circuit our living by choosing the path that is the most comfortable.”

p.11 We are all trying to do the best we can and are all uncertain about whether we’re good enough. It never varies.

p.13 “The common denominator is the fact that fear is keeping all of [us] from experiencing life the way they want to experience it.”

p.13-16 Fear can be broken down into 3 levels:

1. The surface story (2 types)
   1. Those that happened
   2. Those that require action
2. Involve the ego and inner states of mind, not exterior situations
3. “At the bottom of every one of your fears is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you.”

** p.16 “You can handle all your fears without having to control anything in the outside world.”

p.16-17 “Some fear is instinctual and healthy and keeps us alert to trouble. The part that holds us back from personal growth is inappropriate and destructive and could possibly be blamed on our conditioning.”

p.17 Society ‘tells’ us to err on the side of caution to protect ourselves more than to protect others.

p.21 “The logic a person uses can automatically program him/herself for failure.” p. 21

** p.22-28 5 truths about fear:

1. “The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.”
2. “The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.”
   1. “What really made the difference was the sense of accomplishment I felt in pushing through fear and doing things on my own.”
   2. “The more helpless we feel, the more severe is the undercurrent of dread that comes with knowing there are situations in life over which we have no control.”
3. “The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it.”
4. “Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.”
5. “Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.”

p.27 “Retraining faulty thinking takes constant repetition.”

p.29 “We can’t escape fear.”

p.33 “The real issue has nothing to do with the fear itself, but, rather, how we hold the fear.” Some hold their fear from a position of power while others hold it from a position of pain.

p.34 Power within the self is not egomania, but a healthy self-love.

p.35 “It’s the ability to get yourself to do what you want to do.”

p.35 Women are more put off than men are by the concept of power because they have been conditioned to believe that to be powerful is unfeminine and unattractive.

p.35 “The truth is that love and power go together.”

p.36 **“Much of the trick of moving from pain to power is taking action.”

p.37 “Awareness is half the battle.”

p.37 “You can drop an awful lot of excess baggage if you learn to play with life instead of fighting it.”

p.37 “If you keep in mind the direction you want to go, it will help you make decisions about what you are doing in your life.”

p.38 “To be really powerful, you need to be in charge of all aspects of your life. Often people are very powerful in some parts of their lives and pathetic in others.”

p.38 “In the beginning, you need all the gimmicks you can get to remind you of where you want to go.”

p.39 “The way you use words has a tremendous impact on the quality of your life.”

p.39 “Your subconscious believes only what it hears, not what is true.”

p.40 “It is always better to take responsibility for whatever happens to you in life than always to be the victim.”

p.43 “The more powerfully you speak, the more you will be a force in the world around you.”

p.43 “You can bring more power into your life by expanding your comfort zone.”

p.49 “So many of us think we are taking responsibility for our own lives when we simply are not. The ‘victim’ mentality is very subtle and takes many forms.”

p.50 When you give away your power, you become paralyzed in your attempts to deal with fear.

p.52-63 7 definitions of taking responsibility:

“Taking responsibility means…

1. never blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having or feeling.”
2. not blaming yourself.”
3. being aware of where and when you are not taking responsibility so that you can eventually change.” “Anger is your clue that you are not taking responsibility.”
4. handling the Chatterbox. It’s the voice that heralds doom, lack and losing.”
5. being aware of payoffs that keep you ‘stuck.’ Payoffs explain why we choose to perpetuate what we don’t want in our lives.
6. figuring out what you want in life and acting on it.” “You have the power to create what you need.”
7. being aware of the multitude of choices you have in any given situation.”

p.65-67 6 exercises to help you feel noticeably more powerful in the face of your fears:

1. “List all the payoffs you get from staying stuck in some aspect of your life.”
2. “Be aware of all the options you have during the course of a given day.”
3. “Start noticing what you say in conversations with friends.”
4. “In a notebook, list the many choices available to you that can change presently upsetting experiences into positive ones. “The key is not to blame others for your being upset.”
5. “Begin to look at the gifts you have received from what you have always looked at as a ‘bad’ situation.”
6. “See if you can go one week without criticizing anyone or complaining about anything.”

**p.72 “Positive thinking is one of the most difficult of all concepts to get across to people.”

p.72 “There is an automatic assumption that negative is realistic and positive is unrealistic.”

**p.72 “It is reported that over 90% of what we worry about never happens.”

p.73 “Nothing is realistic or unrealistic—there is only what we think about any given situation. We create our own reality.”

p.75 “Positive words make us physically strong; negative words make us physically weak.”

p.76 “Negative thoughts take away your power and thus make you more paralyzed from your fear.”

p.78-80 6 tools to make your daily routine more efficient and more pleasurable:

1. A small portable cassette player
2. Inspirational tapes
3. Inspirational books
4. Index cards
5. Positive quotes
6. Affirmations—a positive statement that something is already happening.

• Always state affirmations in the present
• Always phrase affirmations in the positive

p.80 “Outtalk your negativity.”

p.85 “Positive thinking needs daily practice.”

p.85 **“Positive thinking in its most constructive form does not deny the pain and suffering that exist in this world.”

p.86 Denial and hopelessness create inactivity.

p.86 “The key is to know that you can lead a productive and meaningful life no matter what the external circumstances are.”

p.90 “It is amazingly empowering to have the support of a strong, motivated and inspirational group of people.”

p.90 “Negativity is contagious.”

p.92 “Life becomes more fun and less of a struggle when you don’t have to pioneer on your own.”

p.94 “What we resist, persists.”

p.104 “When you rock the boat, someone will tell you to sit down. It is their way of defending their security.”

**p.116-117 “Underlying all our fears is a lack of trust in ourselves.”

p.118 “The knowledge that you can handle anything that comes your way is the key to allowing yourself to take risks.”

**p.118 “Security is not having things; it’s handling things.”

p.119-124 Before making a decision:

1. “Affirm to yourself, I can’t lose—regardless of the outcome of the decision I make.”
2. “Do your homework.”
3. “Establish your priorities.”
4. “Trust your impulses.”

• “There was no right or wrong decision, just different ones.
  • “The trick is simply to make whatever place you’re in your educational forum and learn everything you can about yourself and the world around your.”
  • “Lighten up.”

p.124-125 After making a decision:

1. “Throw away your picture.”
2. “Accept total responsibility for your decisions.”
3. “Don’t protect, correct.”
   1. When you take responsibility for your decisions, you become a lot less angry at the world, and, most important, a lot less angry at yourself.

p.127 “The trick in life is not to worry about making a wrong decision; it’s learning when to correct!”

p.127 “The two most obvious clues are confusion and dissatisfaction.”

p.141 “Act as if you really count.”

p.142 “Participating 100% eliminates boredom.”

p.146 “Action is the key to your success.”

p.154 “Saying yes means letting go of resistance and letting in the possibilities that our universe offers in new ways of seeing the world.”

p.154 Saying yes is the miracle tool for dealing with our deepest, darkest fears.

p.155 “With a positive attitude, value can be created from anything that happens to you in life.”

p.158 “Acknowledgement of pain is very important.”

p.160 Those who withdraw from life, choose symbolically to hide under the covers to keep themselves from becoming victims—ironically, end up complete victims of their own fears.

**p.161 “The last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Victor Frankl

p.162 “It is only when we see possibility for change that we can work to effect change.”

p.162 “Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you.”

p.163-164 5 steps to saying yes:

1. “Create awareness that you are saying no.”
2. “There is something about physically affirming an idea that helps to create acceptance.”
3. “Physically relax your body.”
4. “Look for ways to create value from any experience.”
5. “Be patient with yourself.”

p.170 “Most of us in our society do not really know how to give.”

• p.174 “It’s easy to give when you feel abundantly endowed, but you only feel that way when you give, not before!” Give away thanks. Give away information. Give away praise.
• Give away time. Give away money. Give away love

p.178 “So much of what we learn in life comes to us with great difficulty.”

p.179 “You must become what you want to attract.”

p.182 Act as if you do count.

**p.184 “You can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence. To love is to be able to give.”

p.184 “Your life is already abundant. You simply haven’t noticed it.”

p.200 “Positive self-talk works even if you don’t believe it initially.”

p.213 “The biggest pitfall as you make your way through life is impatience.”

p.214 “Patience means knowing it will happen and giving it time to happen.”

p.215 “Trust your feelings.”

p.217 “Experience is our greatest teacher.”

p.219 “To become involved is to reduce our fear.”

Chelsea Detrick

By Daniel Goleman —

“Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.” Aristotle

P. ix “This book is a guide to making sense of the senselessness… our scientific understanding of the realm of the irrational.

P xii “… abilities called here emotional intelligence which include self-control, zeal and persistence, and the ability to motivate oneself. And these skills can be taught to children, giving them a better chance to use whatever intellectual potential the genetic lottery may have given them.”
*“(This book is about) scientific insights into the emotions… to understand what it means – and how – to bring intelligence to emotion.”

P. xiii “Neurological data suggest a window of opportunity for shaping our children’s emotional habits… At the present we leave the emotional education of our children to chance.” P 27: “Continual emotional distress can create deficits in a child’s intellectual abilities, crippling the capacity to learn.”

P. xiv “Aristotle’s… challenge is to manage our emotional life with intelligence.”

P. 9 “feelings are essential to thought, thought to feeling. But when passions surge the balance tips: it is the emotional mind that captures the upper hand, swamping the rational mind.”

P 13. Horace Walpole: “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

P. 20 “Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.”

P. 22 “Many potent emotional memories date from the first few years of life.”

P. 34 “Academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life… The crucial emotional competencies can indeed be learned and improved upon by children – if we bother to teach them.”

P. 36 “Academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil – or opportunity – life’s vicissitudes bring… People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives.”

P. 37 Howard Gardner: “We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed, and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.”

P. 39 Howard Gardner: “the core of interpersonal intelligence includes the capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people. In intrapersonal intelligence, the key to self-knowledge includes access to one’s own feelings and the ability to
discriminate among them and draw upon them to guide behavior.”

P. 41 “many people with IQs of 160 work for people with IQs of 100, if the former have poor intrapersonal intelligence and the latter have a high one. And in the day-to-day world no intelligence is more important than the interpersonal.”

P. 43 Five main domains of emotional intelligence:
1. Knowing one’s emotions: self-awareness
2. Managing emotions
3. Motivating oneself
4. Recognizing emotions in others: empathy
5. Handling relationships

P. 54 “The key to sounder personal decision-making, in short: being attuned to our feelings unlike narcissism… Selfawareness is fundamental to psychological insight; this is the faculty that much of psychotherapy means to strengthen.”

P. 55 “There are two levels of emotion, conscious and unconscious… Emotions that simmer beneath the threshold of awareness can have a powerful impact on how we perceive and react, even though we have no idea they are at work… Emotional self-awareness is the building block of the next fundamental of emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood.”

*P. 56 “The goal is balance, not emotional suppression: every feeling has its value and significance… what is wanted is appropriate emotion, feeling proportionate to circumstance… Extremes – emotions that wax too intensely or for too long – undermine our stability.”

P. 57 “The art of soothing ourselves is a fundamental life skill… one of the most essential of all psychic tools… We very often have little or no control over when we are swept by emotion, nor over what emotion it will be. But we can have some say in how long an emotion will last.”

P. 63 “Distraction is a highly powerful mood-altering device; it’s hard to stay angry when we’re having a pleasant time.”

*P. 65 “Worry is, in a sense, a rehearsal of what might go wrong and how to deal with it; the task of worrying is to come up with positive solutions for life’s perils by anticipating dangers before they arise.”

P. 73 “Aerobic exercise is one of the more effective tactics for lifting mild depression.”

P. 78 We need to be aware of “the devastating impact of emotional distress on mental clarity… the power of the emotional brain to overpower, even paralyze, the thinking brain.”

*P 80 “Emotional intelligence is a master aptitude, a capacity that profoundly affects all other abilities, either facilitating or interfering with them.”

P. 83 “Emotional skills such as impulse control and accurately reading a social situation can be learned…emotional intelligence is a meta-ability… anxiety undermines the intellect.”

P. 85 “Too little anxiety brings about apathy, while too much anxiety sabotages any attempt to do well…Good moods, while they last, enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more complexity, thus making it easier to find solutions to problems, whether intellectual or interpersonal … The intellectual benefits of a good laugh are most striking when it comes to solving a problem that demands a creative solution.”

P. 86 “Being in a foul mood biases memory in a negative direction… Emotions out of control impede the intellect.”

P. 87 “Hope plays a surprisingly potent role in life… believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals, whatever they may be (is important).”

P. 89 “While the pessimist’s mental set leads to despair, the optimist’s spawns hope… temperament can be tempered by experience. Optimism and hope – like helplessness and despair – can be learned.”

*P. 89 “Self-efficacy: the belief that one has mastery over the events of one’s life and can meet challenges as they come up. Developing a competency of any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, making a person more willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges.”

P. 90 “People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities.”

P. 91 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: “People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them are a bit greater than usual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them, people get bored.”

P. 95 “Channeling emotions toward a productive end is a master aptitude…(consider) the power of emotion to guide effective effort.”

P. 96 “Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings (in others)… For all, rapport – the root of caring – stems from emotional attunement, from the capacity for empathy… People’s emotions are rarely put into words; far more often they are expressed through other cues. The key to intuiting another’s feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels.”

P. 97 “Empathy is independent from academic intelligence… 90% or more of an emotional message is nonverbal.”

P. 105 “The roots of morality are to be found in empathy.”

P. 113 “One key social competence is how well or poorly people express their own feelings.”

*P. 114 “Emotions are contagious… Most emotional contagion is far more subtle, part of a tacit exchange that happens in every encounter… We send emotional signals in every encounter, and those signals affect those we are with. The more adroit we are socially, the better we control the signals we send.”

P. 118 Components of interpersonal intelligence:
1. Organizing groups (initiating and coordinating the efforts of a network of people)
2. Negotiating solutions (the talent of the mediator)
3. Personal connection (a talent for empathy and getting people together)
4. Social analysis (being able to see other’s feelings, motives and concerns)

P. 124 “Popular children spend time observing the group to understand what’s going on before entering in.”

P. 133 There is an emotional gender gap. “Simply having reached an agreement about how to disagree is key to marital survival.”

P. 141 “When grievances simmer, they build and build in intensity until there’s an explosion; when they are aired and worked out, it takes the pressure off.”

*P. 143 “Calming down: every strong emotion has at its root an impulse to action; managing those impulses is basic to emotional intelligence.”

P. 146 “The best formula for a complaint is ‘XYZ’: When you did X, it made me feel Y, and I’d rather you did Z instead.”

P. 149 “When emotionally upset, people cannot remember, attend, learn or make decisions clearly. As one management consultant put it, ‘(Doing) stress makes people stupid.’”

P. 151 “Without feedback people are in the dark… How criticisms are given and received goes a long way in determining how satisfied people are with their work, with those they work with, and with those to whom they are responsible.”

P. 160 “Emotional Intelligence, the skills that help people harmonize, should become increasingly valued as a workplace asset in the years to come.”

P. 189 “Family life is our first school for emotional learning.”

P. 193 “school success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read so much as by emotional and social measures: being self-assured and interested; knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with others.”

P. 193/4 Seven key ingredients of how to learn in an emotionally intelligent way:
1. Confidence
2. Curiosity
3. Intentionality
4. Self control
5. Relatedness
6. Capacity to communicate
7. Cooperativeness

P. 207 “Strong emotional memories and the patterns of thought and reaction that they trigger, can change with time.”

P. 215 “Emotional circuitry; for any given emotion people can differ in how easily it triggers, how long it lasts and how intense it becomes.”

P. 221 “Those parents who engineer gradual emboldening experiences for their children offer them what may be a lifelong corrective to their fearfulness.”

P. 223 In working with children, “No human quality is beyond change.”

P. 227, “Emotional habits are malleable throughout life.”

P. 231 “Emotional illiteracy… this new and troubling deficiency is not being addressed in the standard school curriculum.”

P. 239 “Particularly in young people, problems in relationships are a trigger for depression.”

P. 246 “Moods like anxiety, sadness and anger don’t just descend on you without your having any control over them; you can change the way you feel by what you think.”

P. 262 “Learning doesn’t take place in isolation from kids feelings. Being emotionally literate is as important for learning as instruction in math and reading… the goal is to raise the level of social and emotional competence in children as a part of their regular education.”

Glenn Detrick

By Ajahn Chah —

1. Ajahn Chah was an infectiously happy monk, living from 1918 to 1992, in the forests of northern Thailand. He demystified the concepts of Buddhism so that almost anyone who listened could get the point. He gave profound teachings to laypeople, showing real respect for
anyone with a sincere interest.

2. The three characteristics of insight meditation – impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and selflessness (anatta). Other important terms: “metta” – loving kindness and “tudong”, ascetic wandering, supposed to be the practice of utmost simplicity.

3. Whatever we do should be for the purpose of developing wisdom. Developing wisdom is for the purpose of liberation, freedom from all conditions and phenomena.

4. Chah did not recommend a lot of reading or study, especially for his Western disciples. “You have been studying all your lives, and where has that gotten you?”

5. Monks eat once a day. “If the body is too comfortable the mind gets out of control.”

6. Ajahn Chah is in the ‘Forest Tradition’. Not too long ago, Thailand was 70% forested; a present, it is probably closer to 10%. He often praised the simple life in the forest for it conduciveness to meditation: “In the forest, there is quiet and tranquility. We can contemplate
things clearly and develop wisdom.”

7. Karma in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, the quality of somebody’s current and future lives as determined by that person’s behavior in this and in previous lives. Also, destiny or fate. The mind is continuously creating karma and suffering.

8. In meditation practice, we work to develop mindfulness so that we will be constantly aware. Working with energy and patience, the mind can become firm. Then whatever sense phenomena we experience, whether agreeable of disagreeable … we will see them clearly. Phenomena are one thing, and the mind is another. They are separate matters… We have to separate and recognize what the mind is and what phenomena are. Then we can be at ease.

9. We are deluded by phenomena and are following after them; the mind is caught by its objects and follows after its moods.

10. The mind and its objects get mixed together. Then we experience suffering. There aren’t many minds, but there are many phenomena. If we aren’t aware of ourselves, we don’t know our minds and so we follow after these things.

11. Foolishness is in the mind. Intelligence is in the mind. Darkness and delusion exist in the mind. Knowledge and illumination exist in the mind. The original mind is by nature perfectly peaceful; it is something that is already within us.

12. * The causes for not being peaceful are within us.

13. Our emotions of love and hate never bring us satisfaction. We never feel we have enough, but are always somehow obstructed. We aren’t satisfied to be what we are, so our minds waver endlessly.

14. This world of beings actually has no ruler. It is we ourselves who rule our own lives, because we have the power to decide on doing good or doing evil. No one else does these for us.

15. What is there that can be lost by a person? There is nothing at all – all is impermanent.

16. Realization of the truth must be accomplished by each individual – from within.

17. We have to understand the way things really are, the way things contact the mind and how the mind reacts, and then we can be at peace.

18. Impermanence, suffering and absence of a self are the nature of phenomena. They are nothing else but this, but we give things more meaning than they really have.

19. Absolutely everything is uncertain.

20. If we don’t experience the truth of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self, then there is no end to suffering. If we pay attention, we can see it every moment. It is present in mind and body, and we can see it. This is where we find peace.

21. When there is pleasure and happiness, there must be pain and suffering… We suffer because we were born.

22. If there is no mention of impermanence, it is not the speech of the wise.

23. The present is the fruit of the past. It is also the cause of the future. The present is where the past and future come together.

24. Happiness only goes so far, because the mind is under the influence of desire for something that is changeable. Whatever we have will become a source of suffering when we lose it if we aren’t aware of its impermanence.

25. The Buddha taught to look in the present and see the impermanence of body and mind, of all phenomena as they appear and cease without grasping at any of it. If we can do this, we will experience peace. This peace comes because of letting go. If we are letting go, suffering will
not come about.

26. There is a feeling of joy in reflecting on the way we (monks) live, in comparing our lives previously with our lives now.

27. If the mind is always allowed to be thinking and worrying over things, we can never see anything clearly. When the mind is settled and still, wisdom will be able to see things. The illuminating light of wisdom surpasses any other kind of light.

28. Doubt is not something that another person can resolve for us. It is for us to apply to our own experience and come to direct knowledge for ourselves. Do not think that this or that teacher will resolve our doubts for us. Whatever teaching you hear, internalize it and practice to realize
the truth of it, here and now.

29. Realize that truth is within yourself.

30. In anything we undertake, we have to pass through difficulty to reach ease.

31. Suffering is truth. If we allow ourselves to face it, then we will start to seek a way out of it.

32. My way of training people involves some suffering, because understanding suffering is the Buddha’s path to enlightenment. Practice in Buddhism is for the purpose of freeing ourselves from suffering, the unsatisfactoriness that pervades ordinary experience.

33. Opposing our habits creates some suffering.

34. Happy people do not develop wisdom. They’re asleep.

35. However much happiness and comfort we may have, having been born we cannot avoid aging, we must fall ill, and we must die. This is suffering itself, here and now.

36. Be content for what we have.

37. Every day we should do at least one meritorious act. At the very least you can show kindness to an animal. Don’t let a day go by without creating virtue.

38. We have built our safe haven with good deeds.

39. Visakha Puja is the Buddhist holiday commemorating the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha.

40. We have always seen everything in terms of a self.

41. When someone speaks harshly to us, if we don’t get angry, we have transcended suffering. Getting beyond suffering doesn’t depend on others’ opinions of us, but of our individual state of mind.

42. The Buddha posed this question, “Days and nights are relentlessly passing; how well are we using our time?”

43. The terrible sufferings that people experience are only products of their own minds.

44. If we don’t realize the ultimate truth in our hearts, we won’t reach satisfaction.

45. “I think that what it comes down to is that people are afraid of change and afraid of death.”

46. Meditative tranquility is usually divided into peace through concentration and peace through wisdom. Suggestion: seek out the quietest, most remote place to meditate.

47. Wisdom comes from tranquility. We can only escape through wisdom.

48. Stillness is tranquility, and flowing is wisdom. The mind of a true practitioner is like still water that flows, or flowing water that’s still.

49. The Buddha taught that everything happens due to causes.

50. The Buddha taught us to stop wanting to be something, because he realized that all this wanting to get something and to be something is suffering.
51. When you are at your wits end, let go.

52. Liberation means attaining freedom from the taints of craving and ignorance.

53. If the mind is bright and awake, don’t doubt that. It’s a condition of mind. If it’s dark and dull, don’t doubt about that. Just continue to practice diligently without getting caught up in reactions to those states. Don’t make yourself suffer over these conditions of mind.

54. Whatever!

55. On meditation: We will progress on the path because of continuous effort.

56. We have this idea that living very long will bring happiness. That’s really deluded thinking.

57. People’s desires in the present time are constantly in search of more and are never satisfied. Everyone is impoverished by their desires. Wanting brings us such immense suffering. It’s something we really ought to investigate and reflect on.

58. Whatever we may gain or accomplish in the world, it is still of the world and subject to decay and loss, so don’t get too carried away by it. We tend to ‘lean on’ possessions, pleasure, reputation, praise and wealth. These then become the roots of our suffering.

59. If we depend on others to speak and act in ways that are always pleasing to us, can we ever be
happy?

60. If you seek a teacher, you won’t find a teacher. If you give up the teacher, you will find the teacher. It seems to me that most of you have probably had enough teaching.

61. Thus the Buddha said, “I am enlightened through my own efforts, without any teacher.” Through practice you come to realize something for yourself. One is enlightened by oneself.

62. One should be one’s own witness. Don’t take others as your witness. It means learning to trust yourself.

63. We should make the most of the opportunity we have. Before we worry about the deficiencies of others, those of us who understand and can practice should do that straight away.

Glenn Detrick

By The Dalai Lama —

1. His Holiness describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk who lives his life with simplicity, humor and great warmth. Everywhere his message is the same – the importance of love, compassion and forgiveness.

2. “I speak from my own experience. I will not propose that my way is best. The decision is up to you.”

3. All sentient beings, particularly human beings, want happiness and do not want pain and suffering.

4. There is no absolute; everything is relative, so we must judge according to the circumstances.

5. When I say ‘spiritual’ I do not necessarily mean any kind of religious faith. When I use the word ‘spiritual’ I mean basic human good qualities such as human affection, a sense of involvement, honesty, discipline and human intelligence properly guided by good motivation. We have all these
things from birth.

6. All religious teachings and traditions teach us to be good human beings. As humans, we all have the same human potential.

7. Humans have the potential not only to create happy lives for themselves, but also to help other beings. We have a natural creative quality and it is very important to realize this.

8. With the realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world. Self-confidence is very important, as is an awareness of one’s own potential. Human beings can transform themselves by increasing the good qualities and reducing the negative qualities.

9. The smile is a very important feature of the human face. It is illogical to expect smiles from others if one does not smile oneself. Many things depend on one’s own behaviors.

10. It is important to be mindful of the benefits from long-term and short-term happiness.

11. There is both positive and negative desire. Desire is the prime mover in achieving happiness now and for the future. The antidote to negative desire is contentment.

12. Bodily health, material wealth and companions and friends are three factors for happiness. Contentment is the key that will determine the outcome of your relations with all three of these factors.

13. Friendly competition can be a stimulating factor for growth and progress.

14. The outcome of our interactions depends upon the application of intelligence.

15. Our behavior in our daily lives is the key factor in determining whether all our faculties and relationships produce genuine, long-lasting satisfaction or not. Much depends on our own attitude; motivation is the key thing.

16. One must have the ability to concentrate, to focus on events, actions and goals.

17. In summary, good conduct is the way in which life becomes more meaningful, more constructive and more peaceful. For this, much depends on our own behavior and our own mental attitude.

18. The success of our lives and our futures depends on our individual motivation and determination or self-confidence.

19. I think that a person who has had more experience of hardships can stand more firmly in the face of problems than the person who has never experienced suffering. Some suffering can thus be a good lesson for life. My own tragic experiences have had some valuable aspects.

20. Buddhist religious practice greatly emphasizes the importance of the awareness of death and impermanence.

21. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether in Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred or so on. That is very important. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass
away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier.

22. Anger and hatred are two of our closest friends. By using common sense, with the help of compassion and wisdom, I now have a more powerful argument with which to defeat anger. It is bad for our material facilities if our mind is dominated by anger.

23. * According to my experience, it is clear that if each individual makes an effort, then he or she can change.

24. People often describe Buddhism as a ‘science of the mind’.

25. Negative emotions are those which immediately create some kind of unhappiness or unease. On the basis of compassionate motivation, anger can in some cases be useful because it gives us extra energy and enables us to act swiftly.

26. The sources of our happiness: good health, material facilities and good companions.

27. Your mental state should always remain calm.

28. I sometimes think of myself as a half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.

29. You, who I think have had a better education and more experience than myself, have more potential to change within yourself.

30. Our mental attitude is very crucial. The ultimate source of happiness is in our mental attitude; the main cause of a happy life is within.

31. While money is very useful and necessary, it is not the ultimate source of happiness.

32. I consider hatred to be the ultimate enemy. By ‘enemy’ I mean the person or factor which directly or indirectly destroys our interest. Our interest is that which ultimately creates happiness.

33. The supreme source of my happiness is my calmness of mind. That is something an external enemy cannot destroy. The ultimate source of my mental happiness is my peace of mind. Nothing can destroy this except my own anger.

34. Anger, if you do not make an attempt to reduce it, will remain with you and even increase. Through training and discipline you can change (and learn how to deal effectively with anger). You should not become dissatisfied or frustrated because this is the cause of anger and hatred.

35. Dissatisfaction is the seed of anger.

36. By bringing about a change in our outlook towards things and events, all phenomena can become friends or sources of happiness, instead of becoming enemies or sources of frustration.

37. Without anger and without hatred, we can manage (ourselves) more effectively.

38. * One of the effective means by which one can overcome the forces of negative emotions like anger and hatred is by cultivating their counter-forces, such as the positive qualities of mind like love and compassion.

39. Compassion is the most wonderful and precious thing. Basic human nature is, I believe, compassionate and gentle.

40. It is my experience that those lessons which we learn from teachers who are not just good, but who also show affection for the students, go deep into our minds. Irrespective of whether you are a believer or non-believer, compassion for the students’ lives or futures, not only for examinations,
makes your work as a teacher much more effective.

41. We depend heavily on the affection of others.

42. The human body appreciates peace of mind.

43. Our potential for compassion is there. The only issue is whether or not we realize this and utilize it. By nature we are compassionate. Compassion is something very necessary and something which we can develop (to a higher degree).

44. The Buddhist interpretation is that genuine compassion is based on a clear acceptance or recognition that others, like ourselves, want happiness and have the right to overcome suffering. On that basis one develops some kind of concern about the welfare of others, irrespective of one’s attitude to
oneself. That is compassion.

45. With genuine compassion you view others as more important than yourself.

46. My interests are not independent of others. My happiness depends on others’ happiness.

47. The whole world has become much smaller, but the human consciousness is still lagging behind.

48. If an individual is compassionate, he or she will immediately make friends. Genuine human friendship is on the basis of human affection.

49. Wisdom is extremely important in increasing compassion indefinitely.

50. I think that in your daily lives and in all sorts of your professional work, you can use this compassionate motivation (to build effective relationships).

51. Human compassion is the key factor of all human business. Every human action that is without human feeling becomes dangerous.

52. If you have respect for or interest in religion, that is good. But even if you have no interest in religion, you should not forget the importance of these deeper human values. I see compassion, love and forgiveness, as a common ground for all different religions.

53. The greater the force of your compassion, the greater your resilience. Compassion is also a source of inner strength and is very important to a successful future.

54. The only sensible thing is that all different religions work together and live harmoniously, helping one another.

55. Suffering is something that we all do not desire, but it is a consequence or an effect of ignorance.

56. We must begin to appreciate the inter-connectedness between the well-being of human beings and the natural environment.

57. There are no independent causes of one’s own happiness. In order to have a happier future for oneself, you have to take care of everything which relates to you and appreciate the interconnectedness of all events and phenomena.

58. I think the most important task of any religious practitioner is to examine oneself within one’s own mind.

59. In the history of humanity there have been very tragic events which came about because of religion.

60. Personally, I feel that much of the environmental problem really stems from our insatiable desire, our lack of contentment and our greed.61. I personally believe that war cannot ever lead to the ultimate solution of a problem. Therefore, I think it is important for all the religious traditions to take a united stand and voice their opposition to every idea of war. We must DO something to bring about an end to war and conflict. The
motivating factor which triggers the need for weapons is human emotion – hatred and anger.

62. A proper way of education is the most important element in terms of hope for a better future.

63. (Talking about what is on TV): If you compare killing and sex, sex is much better! If we pretend that it is not a part of human life, that doesn’t make much sense.

64. Q: “Is it possible for an ordinary person to transform his or her fear and despair?” A. Oh, yes, it is very possible. The most important thing is to smile! I have the freedom to act according to the circumstances.

65. As the individual gains greater insight into the nature of reality, the greater the power of his or her compassion and altruism will be.

66. I would personally think that Buddhism can be defined as a sort of combination of spiritual path and philosophical system. In Buddhism, greater emphasis is given to reason and intelligence than faith.

67. According to Buddhism, it is karma, one’s own action, that really determines rebirth. Also, the state of mind at the point of death has a crucial role.

68. Spiritual development takes time; it doesn’t happen just overnight.